


for the weak

by holtzbabe



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, a birthday present for my favourite artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 19:26:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzbabe/pseuds/holtzbabe
Summary: “Does she ever sleep?”It was one of the first questions Erin ever asked about the enigma of a nuclear engineer that Abby had accumulated in her absence.





	for the weak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aloc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aloc/gifts).



> It's the incredible [Ann](http://googoogojob.tumblr.com)'s birthday today and I couldn't resist writing this to go along with one of my favourite pieces of art she's done (hyperlinked within) and the saying I associate most with her! Happy birthday Ann!!! You're the best! Hope you like this! Ironically, I wrote most of this in the middle of the night and it hasn't been betaed, so I'm sorry for any mistakes!

“Does she ever sleep?”

It was one of the first questions Erin ever asked about the enigma of a nuclear engineer that Abby had accumulated in her absence.

There was a lot about their friendship that baffled her—their cult-like devotion to each other and their practice, the lightning-fast banter, the cause and effect of their movements, neurons firing in synchronicity before either of them so much as opened their mouth—and yet upon seeing them together, it was impossible to imagine them without each other. Of everyone, Abby understood Holtzmann the best.

As someone whose answer to every question consisted of a series of increasingly implausible tales spun from a delicate web of bizarre half-truths, Holtzmann seemed to take great pride in her entire existence being inexplicable. She operated so far outside of convention that it wouldn’t surprise Erin if the news came out that Holtzmann had been dropped off on the planet only recently.

From the moment she had met the eclectic engineer, Erin had turned to Abby often for answers.

It was a mere few days after their lukewarm reunion that she had first noticed the tech multiplying like bunnies overnight. Hours upon hours of work materializing where there were none to spare. Although Erin had dedicated her life’s work to theoretical physics and knew the laws of the universe better than most, the engineer worked so fast that Erin idly wondered if she had discovered how to bend time to her will, or perhaps dabbled in time travel as a hobby.

The clues were all there to suggest that the explanation was far simpler—bloodshot eyes, empty energy drink cans Sharpied with messy H’s, yawns hidden behind fists.

Abby had hardly flinched when Erin asked the question. “Of course,” she said, as if the answer was obvious.

It _was_ obvious—every human needed sleep. Science had yet to pinpoint exactly what purpose sleep served, which had always struck Erin as fascinating. The theories were endless, but all that was definite was that sleep _did_ serve a purpose. Sure, the hours could vary. Sure, some people could get by on very little sleep. But at the very least, everyone needed at least some sleep to function.

Erin was positive that Holtzmann had to be getting very little sleep to be able to work as fast as she did. And although it was up for debate whether or not she was human at all, she _did_ seem to be showing the effects of the deprivation.

For the first week or so, Erin didn’t think much of it—she was barely sleeping herself, not with everything that was going on. Once the dust settled from their apocalyptic scare, all she had wanted to do was sleep. In fact, upon returning from her brush with the spectral plane, she had gone straight to her apartment to pass out for the foreseeable future. Holtzmann had insisted on accompanying her along the way to make sure she made it home safely—there was no telling how the portal would affect her and Abby over the short- and long-term.

In her cramped apartment, Holtzmann had rifled through her cupboards in search of a snack while Erin showered the sweat and debris from herself and discarded her filthy jumpsuit in favour of a lavender camisole and cotton shorts. She knotted her stark white hair loosely at the nape of her neck and found Holtzmann sunk in the plush white rug of her living room, back against the grey couch, a forkful of leftover lo mein halfway to her mouth.

“That’s almost two weeks old,” Erin said as she flipped the switch on her electric kettle.

Holtzmann smacked her lips. “Adds a special tang.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

“I’ll fall asleep if I sit on the couch.”

Erin fetched a clean mug from the cupboard—the blue one that she received in a holiday gift exchange at Columbia and couldn’t bear to throw away despite there being a chip on the rim. “Why don’t you?”

Holtzmann slurped a noodle. “Are you asking me to sleep over already, Gilbert? Awfully forward of you. I’m a virtual stranger. We’ve only known each other a week.”

“And yet you’re in my home, eating my leftovers. Which you stole while I was in the shower, no less.”

Holtzmann tapped the fork against her bottom lip contemplatively, coating it with sauce. “Yeah, we’re basically already married.”

Erin deposited a fresh tea bag into her mug and set it by the kettle. “ _Already_ makes it sound like marriage is on the horizon. I only meant that saving the world together has taken us a step beyond _virtual stranger_ territory, in my opinion.”

“Same thing.”

Erin looked up in time to catch the wink thrown in her direction. The kettle bubbled eagerly and shut off with a soft click. She lifted it from its base and filled the mug. “Tea?”

Holtzmann set the empty take-out container on the coffee table. “Caffeinated?”

“No. It’s almost nine.”

“Then no.”

“Please crash on my couch.” She sipped carefully, treaded carefully. “You’re in Brooklyn, right? You’ll never make it home tonight. You saw it out there. The roads are littered with abandoned cars and the entire subway is a mess.”

“I’m not going home. I need to get back to the lab. I’ve got some adjustments to make.” Holtzmann flashed a set of perfectly crooked whites.

“What? You need to sleep, Holtz. It’s been an eventful day.”

“Sleep is for the weak.”

Erin set her mug down on the counter with a clink. “So I’m weak, then?”

Holtzmann popped up from the floor and crossed the room with long strides to join Erin in the kitchen. She entered Erin’s bubble like she wasn’t aware that such a line existed, one hand on the counter, cornering her. The granite dug into Erin’s back. If it were a man, she would have felt trapped—but it was Holtzmann, and she felt—

“ _You_ —” Holtzmann dragged her gaze from the floor up the length of Erin’s body, arriving to make eye contact at last with a molten smolder— “are the furthest thing from weak.”

Erin swallowed, breath uneven. “Please stay.”

Holtzmann hooked her thumb under the slipping strap of Erin’s camisole and tugged it up over her shoulder to snap back in place. Her hand lingered there. “Only if you invite me into your bed.”

“You have something against my couch?”

“I have something _for_ its owner.”

“We’re virtual strangers.”

“Halfway to marriage.”

Holtzmann was close enough that she could see the rise and fall of her chest below the weight of her necklace.

Erin reached behind herself for her mug. She regarded Holtzmann over the rim as she gulped. Neither blinked.

“Clean up your take-out container before you come to bed,” Erin said at last.

Holtzmann’s grin was devilish.

 

The irony, of course, was that Holtzmann fell asleep—almost instantly upon plopping herself onto the bed—while Erin lay with wide, burning eyes and counted the number of times that their skin made contact through the night.

In the morning, when she woke, there was no sign that the engineer had been there at all, like Erin had dreamt the offbeat evening in a haze of post-apocalyptic fantasy. But when she shuffled to the kitchen to flick the kettle on, the scent of rotting lo mein rising from the coffee table ticked the corners of her mouth towards the ceiling.

 

The pendulum swung daily. Some days they were so charged with raw magnetism, need pulsing through Erin’s veins like caffeine, that her brain may as well have been operating on an hour of sleep. Work was impossible.

Other days it was a sleepy comfort. They ribbed each other like old friends, danced, laughed at themselves. Holtzmann drank from Erin’s mug while she stood over her desk and then complained about her tea. Erin reminded her that she was welcome to make herself her own, more to her taste, but Holtzmann ignored her and kept at it whenever she got a chance.

Those days were easier to get through.

“Would y’all just bone and get it over with, already?” Patty said one day.

Holtzmann was positioned behind Erin, one hand warm on her back, the other guiding her grasp on the wand of her proton pack. Her technique was all wrong, Holtzmann had informed her earlier that day. Her grip too loose. Her stance abysmal. How she managed to take down any spectres with such sloppy handling was beyond her. Erin thought she was managing just fine, but she’d take hours of mildly demeaning instruction just to have Holtzmann’s arms around her.

“Are you kidding?” Abby laughed from her place leaning against Kevin’s desk. “You think they haven’t already?”

“Excuse me,” Erin said. “That’s incredibly inappropriate. We’re work colleagues.”

“Aw,” Holtz said behind her, breath tickling the bare skin of her neck, “did I get demoted to colleague status? Since when?”

“Shut up.”

Holtzmann kissed the back of her neck. Erin’s face pinked.

Abby pointed. “See?”

Patty snorted. “Holtzy licked my ear yesterday. That doesn’t mean _we’re_ fucking.”

“This is a workplace,” Erin pleaded. “Can we keep it PG?”

“No,” the three of them replied decisively.

“I’ll have you know,” Holtzmann said, “that what you’re witnessing is the courtship ritual of my people.”

“Weirdos?” Patty muttered.

“She’s joking. She’s not ‘courting’ anything.” Erin tried to air quote, but her hands were still occupied. She let her inflection carry her opinion of the word.

“Says who?” There was a challenging smile in Holtzmann’s voice.

Erin weaseled out of her embrace and stowed her gun. “Holtz and I are nothing more than friends—”

“Colleagues,” Holtzmann corrected.

“—and trust me, you guys would know if we were…”

“Doin’ it?” Patty supplied.

“Screwing?” Abby offered.

“Sleeeeeping together?” Holtzmann singsonged.

“…romantically involved,” Erin forced through gritted teeth.

Laughter.

“Erin, my dear, I don’t think even _you_ would know if we were ‘romantically involved.’” Holtzmann forwent the air quotations as well, but her smirk at the words said everything.

Erin sighed. “I’m getting back to work.”

“As am I,” Holtzmann said, with a heady wink for good measure.

 

To say the spell had been broken would imply that there ever had been a spell, that the buzzing between them was unspoken, that they had both been pretending it wasn’t there. In fact, neither of them had made any attempt to ignore the way their relationship was rapidly hurtling towards something. (Marriage, maybe not, but _something_ ).

Holtzmann had been transparent about her attraction since the moment they met in that basement lab that reeked of marijuana, old food, and regret. And Erin, of course, was well known for her unsubtle and unfiltered flirting style. In theory, a match made in heaven—yet here they were, months later, suspended in a state of confusing and frustrating limbo. That was why theories only got you so far. What worked on paper didn’t always work in actuality. Story of Erin’s career.

But where there was a theoretical particle physicist, there was an experimental particle physicist. Where there was an Erin, there was a Holtzmann. Erin was counting on her to put their compatibility to the test when the time came. As much as Erin flirted, her strength wasn’t in making the first move.

 

There was a sudden and staggering resurgence of spectral activity approximately nine months after the boom that brought the team together. The timing had all four of them joking that the new batch of ghosts had been spawned and carried to term by the first wave. Some of the ghosts had had a little too much fun on the day of the apocalypse.

It was, of course, just a way of lightening the mood. In reality, there was no explanation for the fresh population of hot-tempered apparitions terrorizing the city. Patty spent weeks poring over archival records, textbooks, the internet, searching for any anniversaries of terrible historical events, patterns in the locations, anything to make sense of what they were dealing with. She came up short.

All they could do was tackle the ghosts as they appeared, trapping as many as they could and destroying the rest. They were all exhausted by the long, strenuous days, but Holtzmann was dead on her feet. She could hardly keep up with the tech demands they were facing. Pack malfunctions, damage during combat, a never-ending supply of proton grenades and other munitions needing to be built. The others helped where they could, but Holtzmann was particular about who she let meddle with her builds. Abby, yes. Erin, Patty, and Kevin—not so much.

They left her behind at the lab to work some days while they went hand-to-hand without her, but even then there weren’t enough hours in the day. She was always still at the lab when Erin went home for the night, which was around 8:00pm at the earliest these days, and she was always there when Erin arrived in the morning. Days went by where she wore the same clothes, and it was obvious she wasn’t going home at all. Erin purchased her a sleeping bag and brought a spare pillow from her apartment to encourage her to nap, at least. They went untouched.

She sat on the edge of a table upstairs late one night watching Holtzmann work. Her blinks were long. She frequently jerked like she was falling asleep sitting up. They were going to have to rent a moving van to get rid of the bags under her eyes. She wore a green tank top and cargo pants, both of which she’d been wearing for three days.

“Holtz—”

“Sleep is for the weak,” Holtzmann mumbled reflexively.

“And the strong. And the smart. You’d be able to do so much more if you slept for a bit.”

Heavy silence blanketed the room.

Erin sighed finally. “How can I help?”

“My fridge is out of energy drinks,” Holtzmann said, nodding her chin at the minifridge below the table. She didn’t stop working, tightening a screw on the device in front of her. She was trying to develop more tech that would wipe out large quantities of ghosts at the same time. Weapons Of Mass Ectoplasmic Nullification, she called them. WOMENs.

“The fridge downstairs is out, too. I’ll run out and get you some.”

“Thanks, babe,” Holtzmann said drowsily.

Erin paused for a moment before turning for the stairs. There was no time for romantic involvement at a time of crisis. Their flirting, courtship, whatever you wanted to call it, had been put on hold until they dealt with the present situation.

She scurried down the street, head ducked—they had been receiving media flack galore lately. Many cited that they were ineffective, incompetent, and that they were doing more harm than good with respect to the ghost invasion. Some people even blamed them for the presence of the ghosts altogether. Erin wanted to shake every one of them by the shoulders and remind them that there was only so much that the four of them could do, even with Homeland Security supposedly backing them up (their involvement and attitude left much to be desired).

She cleared an entire shelf and cooler of every energy drink in stock, paid for them all with the Ghostbusters business Mastercard (reimbursed by the Mayor’s office), and carried them back to the lab. She had to maneuver awkwardly, one hip raised towards the sensor on the exterior of the building, to get the key fob clipped to her belt to register and unlock the door. Kevin had long since gone home along with his ability (and frequent inability, frankly) to let her in from his desk. They’d had to tighten security over the recent months.

She left most of the bags downstairs and only carried one upstairs. It would be enough to last her through the night, at least.

“I’m back,” she called as she reached the top step, not wanting to spook the sleep-deprived engineer when she was hard at work. As she rounded the corner, she faltered.

[Holtzmann was slumped over her desk, head resting in the crook of her elbow. Her hair was a wild nest, her glasses hung from one ear, her lips ajar and drooling. Her other hand was clenched around a bundle of wires.](http://googoogojob.tumblr.com/post/172776507033/doodles-are-for-dudes)

“Oh, Holtz,” Erin whispered. She quietly set the bag of energy drinks on the floor and crept closer. She surveyed the work-in-progress.

There, on top of the small machine that was already humming in a worrisome way, Erin’s name swooped in perfect cursive. It had been added since she left for the store.

She frowned and reached for the messy blueprints nearby. They showed no such lettering on the machine itself, but _Erin_ was scrawled in the margins in a few spots. Some in pencil, some in pen, even a squat purple-markered version, all clearly added at different times.

She set the blueprints back down and paused behind Holtzmann to press a gentle kiss into her hair, careful not to wake her. Then she took a seat at the next table over, where a whole other set of prototypes rested.

Holtzmann awoke with a start half an hour later and shook the drool off her hand, visibly disoriented.

“Hey,” Erin said gently. “Feel better?”

Holtzmann squinted, blinking into the light like a newborn baby. “What time is it?”

Erin checked her watch. “Just after 11:30.”

“God, seriously? It’s still so early.” Holtzmann released the wires that had been in her fist and flexed her fingers.

“Prototype you’re working on looks good,” Erin said casually.

Holtzmann glanced at it. “S’coming along, I guess.”

“Why does it have my name on it?”

“ _Erin_. Stands for…electro…no, ecto…no, maybe it was electro…um, radiation…uhh…I had it before I fell asleep.”

“It’ll come back,” Erin murmured. She stood from her stool and walked over to lay a hand on Holtzmann’s upper back. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Why don’t you come and find out.”

She helped pull Holtzmann to her feet; it wasn’t hard to convince her to get up, but hard to keep her upright when she could barely stand. She walked them towards the stairs and then carefully down them, keeping one arm wrapped tightly around her slumped form. Outside, she hailed a cab and ushered Holtzmann inside, buckling her in before going around to the other side and sliding in beside her. She relayed her address to the driver and they pulled away from the curb.

Holtzmann’s head rested solid against her shoulder, breath already even. Erin found her hand on the seat between them and clasped it. She craned her neck to kiss the top of her head again and closed her own eyes to wait out the drive.

Outside her apartment, she paid the fare with the business Mastercard again and jostled Holtzmann awake—or at least awake enough to heave her out of the cab. They stumbled together up to Erin’s apartment. Holtzmann wasn’t even coherent enough to make a comment about their destination.

Inside, she led them straight to her bedroom, where she pulled back the sheets and let Holtzmann fall onto the bed. She lifted her legs and moved them up as well, then covered her.

She changed and brushed her teeth, then shut all the lights off and crawled into the other side of the bed. She fully anticipated the exhausted engineer to be passed out, but no sooner had she settled the covers over herself than Holtzmann rolled over and slung a leg over Erin’s.

“Thank you,” she mumbled sleepily.

“You’re welcome.” Erin swallowed. She could still make out Holtzmann’s features in the half-dark of the room. “Holtz?”

“Mmm?”

“Are we romantically involved?”

A long pause, and then a light, melodic laugh. A lullaby. “Told ya you wouldn’t know.”

“Shut up.”

Sleepy silence.

“I’m too tired to kiss you right now,” Holtzmann said. “Tomorrow, when I’m awake and energized, you’re going to have another thing coming.”

“You’d better be here when I wake up, then. No jutting off to the lab without me.”

“You have my word. How long d’you usually sleep? Three, four hours?”

“You’re getting at _least_ six. Don’t fight it.”

“God, I’m _really_ gonna have the energy to kiss you like I mean it.”

Erin laughed quietly. “Good.”

“Y’know, there’s lots you can get up to at night if you don’t sleep. Not just work.”

“Fucking, yeah, I got it,” Erin deadpanned.

Holtzmann snickered. “Ah, we’ve corrupted you at last.”

“I’m a grown woman, Holtz. It’s just that there’s what’s appropriate in the workplace, and then there’s what’s appropriate in the bedroom, and what’s appropriate in the bedroom is—”

Holtzmann yawned.

“—a conversation we’ll save for another time,” Erin finished. “Right now, there’s only one bedroom activity I’m entertaining.”

“Better make it a quickie, because I’m fading fast.”

Erin smiled through the dark. “Goodnight, Holtzmann.”

“Night, Gilbert. Sweet dreams.”

Sweet dreams, indeed.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Let's be friends](http://jillbert.tumblr.com)


End file.
